Remarks at a Ceremony Honoring Physical Fitness Winners.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen:

I am very proud and pleased this morning to welcome all of you to the White House. I think it is quite appropriate that you should be here, and that the White House correspondents should be present on this occasion to witness this ceremony.

You may not be able to tell it by just looking at them, but I want to give my personal testimony in behalf of the newspapermen and newspaperwomen that they are doing very well in our own White House physical fitness training program on our daily walks. We have had very few casualties--we have lost one or two high heels, had one or two dropouts--but generally speaking, the marks are high. Give me a little more time and both the press and, I hope, the President will be in better shape.

A strong nation must be a fit nation, and for these times in this 30th century in which we live we must all do everything we can to be physically fit at all times. But we must also be fit mentally and psychologically.

The enemies of freedom are always quick and unerring in their exploitation of flabbiness and fat and any weaknesses that they may find either in our bodies or in our minds.

All through this century in which we live, the adversaries of our free society have mistakenly assumed that peoples that enjoy the abundance that we enjoy inevitably become unwilling and unable to bear the burdens as well as the challenges of modern times. This assumption, as you know, has always proved wrong. It was wrong in 1917, it was wrong in 1941, it is wrong now.

I hope that there are none in this world today, as we speak here on this beautiful day in this Rose Garden, who will ever for a moment mistake the strength and the purpose and the readiness and the steadfastness of this generation of Americans.

The fronts on which our freedom is challenged are many, but wherever those challenges are presented to us we are determined to respond promptly, prudently, and appropriately.

You who are here with me this morning are the winners of this year's fitness leadership awards. You have made a fine contribution to the health and the strength of your country by outstanding examples of community and national leadership. So I congratulate you and I congratulate the Junior Chamber of Commerce for conducting this kind of program.

If we are to have the strong and healthy society that all of us think we must have, the initiative and effort in this direction must always originate at the local level and it must be carried forward by community leaders throughout this great country. Each of you in your own communities has been doing that.

So I am hopeful that in the days and the months ahead that those of us who are here in Washington may make useful and effective contributions to the long-range success of your efforts. This Nation must have more playgrounds in our cities; it must have more clean and open spaces in our countryside; we must have more parks and recreation areas near our rivers and our lakes and our seashores. We must give serious consideration to making greater use of our public schools as year-round neighborhood recreation centers so that our great investment in these plant facilities may be used not from 9 to 4 but a great many more hours per day and more days each year, and by more people of all ages.

If God is willing and the Congress approves, we are going to have more clean and open spaces in this countryside and we are going to have them this year. We are not just going to talk about them, we are going to do something about them. We are going to have more park and recreation areas; we are going to have more rivers and lakes and seashores; and we are going to better utilize the billions of dollars that we have invested in our plant facilities..

For many years we have been talking about the vast amount of acreage that the Federal Government owns in every State in the Union. We have been talking about it; now we are doing something about it. Every time that we find that it is unnecessary to continue to maintain a defense establishment, that establishment is turned over to the appropriate agency of this Government-the General Services Administration. The man that has first call on utilizing those facilities is the man that has charge of our recreation facilities in this country--the experts of the National Park Service, the experts of our recreational areas, immediately after Secretary McNamara makes this certification, go and take a look at this area and determine whether the public can in any way use it.

We are very proud of the procedures we have established in that regard. Our Nation can be no stronger, I think, than the sum of all its. parts and our striving toward greatness at the national level must be accompanied by a yearning and a striving at the local level toward higher standards, toward higher aspirations than we have ever strived for before.

I am deeply gratified and encouraged by the response that we see on every hand to the demands of these times for local leadership. You would be surprised at the great increase in the volume of mail here at the White House, to say nothing of how it is pouring into Mrs. Johnson's office from local clubs, from women in the communities, from people who enjoy beauty and want to be a part in making this a better land, making our countrysides more beautiful and giving our children better places to play and to spend their leisure hours.

So to those of you who are setting an example, to those of you who are assembled, I want to congratulate you. I want to thank you and I want to tell you as President of all the people of this country, that we appreciate deeply your contributions to physical fitness in this land of ours. We know that the time and the effort and the dedication expended will pay very handsome results and I want to say thank you very much and we will have our 114th walk a little later in the day.